Love Thy Neighbor

by Mark Gilleo

  “Counter-intelligence?”

  “That’s what he called it. I remember looking at the man and thinking how tired he appeared. Tired from lack of sleep, tired from being bombed, tired from getting shot at.”

  “All good reasons to be tired.” Clark took a sip of his coffee, already drawn into the story which he estimated as only half-true.

  “So me and this other private — Mike Fearson from Prescott, Arizona — we go off tramping into the woods at night in search of the Germans who had slipped out of the valley somehow.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “You’re damn right it was dangerous. We had pistols, flashlights, a couple of outdated maps, and enough food for about a day in the wilderness. But we were also young, and when you are young, well, sometimes the dangerous things don’t seem that dangerous. So, anyhow, Mike and I spent a few nights wandering through this valley. We would come back to our unit during the day, but every night the major ordered us back out. We spotted a few bridges, or rather what was left of them, but nothing that would get the unit across the river. We had already sunk one truck and were working on sinking a half-track, in one of the shallowest areas we could find.”

  “How hard is it to find a unit of Germans in tanks trapped in a valley?”

  “Well, the group we were after wasn’t much bigger than ours. War attrition. Probably a patchwork unit trying to get the hell out of Dodge. At any rate, we assumed the Krauts were armed and dangerous, which means you kind of have to sneak up on them a bit.”

  “What happened?”

  “After a couple of days, Mike and I were out around eight or nine in the evening, just as the sky was getting dark. We had probably covered five or six miles, one-way. Each day we went out, we ventured a bit farther than the day before. Anyhow, there was a little dirt road next to a narrow part of the river. Mike and I were kneeling down, taking a slug from our canteens, and we look out over the river and there is a man walking on water.”

  “Walking on the water?”

  “You heard me correctly.”

  “Are you going to tell me you met Jesus?”

  Mr. Stanley shook his head. “No, but we watched this guy walk back and forth. He did a little fishing, standing there, on the water, in the middle of this river.”

  “Mike and I approached as quietly as we could and scared the shit out of this guy who immediately went into a tirade in French.”

  “Could you understand him?”

  “Seeing that he wasn’t a sexy little femme, my French vernacular was useless. The French man scooted across the top of the water until he got to the shore, grabbed his tackle and stormed off, probably pissed because we scared the fish, though he was the one doing all the yelling.”

  “Mike and I walked down to the water. The river was gorgeous. The type of place you’d want to retire. The water was deep, with even deeper pools, near a large bend where the river took a left. Good fishing water. Mike walked down the edge of the steep embankment and I noticed some track marks, and they weren’t from vehicles off any of Uncle Sam’s production lines. Mike was about thirty yards away and he sees something that I can’t. Next thing you know he jumps out over the river and lands, water up to his calves. I was about to yell, ‘I’ll be damned,’ but Mike Fearson looked at his feet and finished my thought. He said with a smile. ‘An underwater bridge. I guess we know how those Germans got out of the valley.’”

  Clark looked mildly confused. “So the Germans built a bridge under the surface of the water?”

  “That’s right. Brilliant, actually. The next day we followed the river down, crossed over, and went after our friends. By the time we reached them, another unit from the South had taken care of the dirty work.”

  “What’s the moral of the story?”

  Mr. Stanley paused. “Not everything is as it appears.”

  “That’s true. But how do you tell when things are indeed exactly as they appear?”

  “Are we talking about your mother?”

  “Yeah. What if she did actually see terrorists in the neighborhood?”

  “You sound like you wish it were true.”

  “Maybe a little. It can’t be easy having people tell you that you’re crazy for thirty some years. It would be nice, in an odd way, if she were right.”

  “I think I’d rather have her be right about something else.” Mr. Stanley paused. “But, I don’t know what she saw. It could have been Nazim, but I guess you know how I feel about him. The question is what do you think about what your mother claims to have seen? No one knows her better than you.”

  “I don’t know. She claimed to have seen the Easter Bunny one year when I was eight.”

  “The Easter Bunny?”

  “Yeah, the Easter Bunny. Have I neglected to tell you the Easter Bunny story?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, that is a ‘no.’ No one forgets the Easter Bunny story.”

  “I guess I need to hear the Easter Bunny story then.”

  Clark started. “I was eight years old and it was early Easter morning. My mom had always taken the time to put together Easter baskets for my father and me, and she hid them somewhere in the house. Well, on this particular night, in the revelry of the evening, I assume my mother had forgotten to take her medication. A recurring holiday theme, I guess.”

  Mr. Stanley nodded.

  “At some point during the wee hours of the morning my mother starts screaming, waking my father and me. We come rushing out of our rooms and my mother is in the living room, pointing into the coat rack, swearing that she just saw the Easter Bunny disappear into its hole behind my dad’s favorite coat.”

  Mr. Stanley looked at Clark, who slowly smiled and then broke into a laugh.

  Mr. Stanley spoke first. “So we have a story about the Easter Bunny and a story about a French guy walking on water.”

  “Jesus could have been French.”

  “Doubtful. What did the FBI guy say?”

  “He said he would check into things.”

  “Well, see what he says.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Probably nothing,” Mr. Stanley responded.

  Clark took a sip from his glass. “You think this country will ever forget 9/11?”

  Mr. Stanley took another drink from his hi-octane, morning concoction. “I can sum up 9/11 pretty simply. On that morning, nineteen hijackers got on four planes, armed with ninety-eight cent box-cutters. Less than twenty dollars worth of weapons. With those twenty-dollars in box-cutters, they killed almost three thousand people and destroyed two buildings worth billions of dollars, and damaged another. And what was the reaction?” Mr. Stanley waited for a second and continued. “Don’t answer. I’ll tell you. The reaction was two wars and the creation of the largest department in the history of the U.S. government.”

  “The DHS,” Clark answered.

  “That’s right. The Department of Homeland Security. 150,000 employees, another 150,000 contractors, and a budget of several hundred billion dollars over the last few years. Unfortunately, DHS has no chance of being effective.”

  “You aren’t instilling me with confidence.”

  “Well, let me start with the problem that was never fixed. The weak link in that attack, from a pure tactical level, was the security screening process at the airport, and more specifically the personnel at the security screening. Let me ask you, how much faith do you have in a high school graduate to catch a determined, well-planned terrorist?”

  “None.”

  “You’re damn right. None.”

  “Maybe, but overtaking a plane and flying it into a pre-determined building is much harder now. The doors are hardened and secured. There are air marshals. The pilots will go into evasive maneuvers and anything not strapped down in the cabin is in for one hell of a ride.”

  “I imagine that’s true. But a terrorist could still use a private plane packed with explosives or something even more sinister. A melt-your-face-off type of chemic
al. And if the crazies out there are still interested in taking down a plane, the next thing we are going to see is a terrorist with a bomb up his ass. He is going to make Wile E. Coyote proud.”

  Clark gave a nervous chuckle and Mr. Stanley continued.

  “I have spent most of my life in D.C. I have a lot of friends and a lot of relatives who work for the government, both local and federal. I will tell you one thing for certain. The government is really only good at one thing: creating unnecessary work and not having the right people to do the work that matters.”

  “Now you’re scaring me.”

  “You don’t think it’s true? I’ll tell you what. Pick a government agency. Any of them. Go down to the front of that building on a work day and watch the people who go in. Look at them and give an honest assessment if you want these people to save your life. Ask yourself if you think these people are capable. I will bet my Cadillac that nine out of the ten people you see will not instill you with enough confidence to bet your lunch money, much less your life. We are talking about people who are incapable of getting out of the building if there were a fire. And then you take these people and add bureaucracy. Any American who thinks we are safer after 9/11 is in a state of delusion and denial.”

  “You’re saying we are sitting ducks.”

  “Yes I am. We have borders to the north and south that you can walk across, and somehow, the government thinks that it is un-American to secure these borders with fencing. And if that is not their argument, then they say it is too expensive. Hell, we spent more on the military in Iraq in a month than it would cost to build a fence on both of our land borders. That is one month. Now that would be money well-spent. And someone needs to explain to me how Saddam Hussein and the search for invisible weapons of mass destruction had anything to do with 9/11. Sure Iraq has turned into a hornet’s nest, but that was after the fact and because of what we did. We have sullied the good name of the U.S., created the most unstable country in modern times, and pissed off just about everyone in the world.”

  “And you think retribution is coming.”

  “Oh, it’s coming. And there is nothing we can do to stop it.”

  Clark looked sullen. “That’s about all the depressing thoughts I can digest for the day.”

  “Wait till you get older. They get more depressing.”

  “Well,” Clark said, standing. “With that, I’m off.” He made his way to the door with Mr. Stanley in his wake. The newspaper was on the table and Clark stopped and pointed. “Are you done with that?”

  “Except for the crossword.”

  “Would you mind if I took the rest? Someone in the neighborhood keeps stealing ours from the curb on Wednesdays.”

  “The coupons are in the Wednesday paper.”

  “Then there’s one cheap bastard in our neighborhood. A paper only costs fifty cents for home delivery.”

  “And it isn’t even worth reading.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. And listen, if you want to know what is going on in the neighborhood, there is one person who knows more than even I.”

  “Mel,” Clark answered as he turned the knob.

  Ariana got up before her soldiers. It was the sign of a good general. A superb military leader. Or so she had once read. It was also the result of a naturally small bladder and a personality that had migrated from generally untrusting to mob-informant suspicious.

  She pulled the blinds on the office and slipped on her running pants and a sweatshirt. There were some things the Americans had perfected and comfortable clothes were at the top of the list. She folded her cot, and pushed it between the filing cabinet and the wall. She rolled up her sleeping bag and put it under the small table in the corner, out of the way.

  The warehouse was cold and her breath lingered. She made her way to the community bathroom and the chill of the toilet seat took her breath away. Finished, she proceeded through her surveillance checklist as she had every morning since establishing her new residence with her adopted kin. She poked her head out the front door of the warehouse and admired the rusted fence ambiance of her neighborhood. She opened the unlocked double doors on the far side of the warehouse, and walked the length of the room that had been a former printing shop.

  She walked to the back of the truck in the parking bay and eyed the large padlock on the roll-down door. Needlessly, she reached for the padlock and tugged firmly. From behind the truck she looked at the oversized door to the one room she had given strict orders not to enter. Her room. Her personal plan for martyrdom, though it would be a voyage through the tunnel of light she wouldn’t take alone.

  The rubber on the bottom of her running shoes kissed off the freezing concrete as she approached her room. She pulled on the lock, and it held firm in the latch. She smiled at the prospects of her plan. Her smile faded before she took another step.

  At her feet was a piece of wire about eight inches long, its thickness near that of a paperclip. She reached down, bending at the knees as women do, and picked up the wire. She examined both ends in the sparing light of the warehouse and took the wire to the bathroom for closer examination. Under the 60-watt bulb over the old sink, she squinted at the scratches on one end of the wire, the abrasion riding out over an inch from the end. She turned away from the light and placed the wire against the width of the door. The end of the scratches matched the distance perfectly.

  Ariana folded the wire with her hands until it was small enough to easily put into her pocket.

  Rules were meant to be broken, she understood. Just not her rules.

  Chapter 22

  A gentle dawn mist hung in the air over the parking lot as the group of a dozen men in dark blue uniforms gathered around the back door of the white van. With the trepidation of a snake charmer’s audience, the semi-circle of blue-collar workers stepped back as the rear door of the van flew open. One-hundred-plus pounds of salivating Rhodesian Ridgeback barking at eye level had that effect.

  The handler of the dog yelled, not without the intended theatrics, “Easy, Raspberry, easy.” The mention of the dog’s name pushed the beast and its barking into a higher gear. Rob Crowe, Raspberry’s owner, pulled mightily on the thick chain that tightened around his dog’s neck. The dog’s barking turned to a stifled wheeze as the chain dug into his thin fur and choked off the canine’s air.

  “Stand back. We’re coming out.”

  The dozen men, with one exception, moved back another generous step. Rob Crowe, wearing a wrinkled uniform and adorned with greasy black hair, let Raspberry out the back of the van and jumped to the pavement. A few of the men, emboldened by the thick chain, taunted the dog from a distance. “Here, doggie, doggie. Cute little Raspberry.”

  Rob Crowe gave the dog two more feet of leash and Raspberry lunged forward. The crowd silenced.

  “OK, are we ready?” Rob asked, his tattooed forearm wrapping around the leash.

  Mel Edgewood, the man under the spotlight, spoke to the audience. “Let’s move the dog between the two trailers so we don’t have a mishap.”

  No one disagreed.

  Mel, short and powerful, walked between the two unused eighteen wheeler trailers and strolled to the back of the make-shift alley. The dilapidated chain-link fence at the far end of the enclosure marked the edge of government property. The blacktop was wet from the morning dew and Mel wiped his boots on the side wheel of the immobilized tractor trailer.

  Rob Crowe, Raspberry tugging his arm as if he understood the implications of a good show, followed Mel around the corner and stopped ten feet away. The dozen colleagues formed a semi-circle safely behind Raspberry and his handler.

  Ten and twenty dollar bills quickly changed hands. Most of the money was on the canine. Terry Porter, a senior member of the group who had long since walked his last postal route, took all bets. He knew what the others didn’t. The smart money was always on the champion. The young guys were rooting for a thrashing. The old guy with gray hair and a beard knew a champ when his saw
one. Betting against Mel was like betting against Ali in his prime.

  “Here are the rules,” Mel Edgewood spoke with his back against the fence. The trailers on each side put him at the end of the alley with nowhere to run. “I go thirty seconds with Raspberry here. If the dog rips my uniform or draws blood, I lose. The only thing I am allowed to use in this challenge is this bag, and any other appendages that I was born with and feel worthy of risking.”

  Mel bounced the thick leather mail-carrier bag on his shoulder. “I almost forgot,” he added, reaching into the leather bag. He pulled out a plastic grocery bag and held it in the air. “A little incentive for my competition.” He removed a huge slab of meat and stepped towards Raspberry. The dog went wild and Rob pulled back on the reigns as Raspberry went up on his hind legs. “Hold him, Rob,” Mel said. “Hold him.”

  Mel stepped forward and let Raspberry get a good whiff of the bloody meat. Not wanting to tease the dog beyond showmanship, Mel walked back to his position and tossed the meat on the ground near the fence behind him. “And if the dog makes it to the steak, I lose.”

  “Let me know when you are ready,” Rob said.

  “Give me a sec to get set.”

  Mel’s infatuation with his Postal Service leather carrier bag hadn’t been love at first site. He still remembered feeling the weight of the empty bag for the first time, nearly thirty-five years ago. “It’s heavy,” he had responded to the supervisor who was in charge of on-the-job training during the end of the peace generation heyday.